6 ms·

Fog Creek and 37Signals are probably more alike than either of us would care to admit (ha!) and I could see Joel writing a very similar article a few years ago

by mhp 16y ago

Fog Creek and 37Signals are probably more alike than either of us would care to admit (ha!) and I could see Joel writing a very similar article a few years ago when we had 20some people at the company. But what works there, or at FC, is not a one size fits all answer. Having managers when there are 10 people are at your company makes no sense. The hierarchy starts out flat, you add a few more people and you're at 20, and the idea of making someone a manager seems like a waste and something a 'BigCo' would do. "We need people who get stuff done, not people who sit around doing nothing but managing", you think. Then you get to 50 people and everything breaks down. You wonder why people are frustrated they can't get things done, while other people are doing things that embarrass your company or compete with other things you are doing. And you realize your company isn't a special little gem that is wholly unlike every other company in existence. You need management. Just make sure you give the devs a professional ladder and compensation structure that doesn't involve moving to management, because managing isn't something everyone is good at or even wants to do. And make sure that management knows their job is a support role to the people at the company who are making things happen, not the other way around.

asolove 16y ago
+1 "managing isn't something everyone is good at." How many bad developers get moved to management to keep them from causing trouble, and then cause even more?
- pavel_lishin 16y ago
  Isn't that basically the Peter Principle?
  - kenjackson 16y ago
    The Peter Principle is less cynical, but probably more realistic. It's that you get promoted for doing a good job, but eventually you get promoted into a job you're not good at -- at which point you stop being promoted and you stay in a role that you're not suited for. Note, there's nothing malicious that happens here. No one is trying to promote a bad developer. People are largely doing what they think makes sense -- promoting top performers.
    - jsdalton 16y ago
      The usual money quote for the Peter Principle is, "in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence" -- but I like your summation so much better.
  - gvb 16y ago
    It is the Dilbert Principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dilbert_principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dilbert_principle "[C]ompanies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management [...] in order to limit the amount of damage they are capable of doing."
    - pavel_lishin 16y ago
      Ah, whoops - that's the one, you're right.
  - emp_ 16y ago
    I like to call it the Alicia Principle http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Speed-of-Code.aspx http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Speed-of-Code.aspx
jasonfried 16y ago
"But what works there, or at FC, is not a one size fits all answer." Absolutely. I'm simply sharing our experiences with how we run things - that's what my Inc. articles are about. I wouldn't expect anyone else to do what we do because we do it. Find your own comfort zone. There are plenty of ways to do plenty of things.
- marcomonteiro 16y ago
  I for one appreciate the insight into how you run things. I especially liked the point you made about encouraging mastery (horizontal) instead of managerial (vertical) promotion. So, thank you for sharing.
- ry0ohki 16y ago
  I really like your approach, especially making everyone manager for a week. I think the only problem I see with it is that if people want to find another job, their 37signals title makes it seem that they essentially "went nowhere". So even if you are paying them a lot more then when they started and they are the best customer service person ever, their resume still says: "Jane Doe - Customer Service Rep 2005-2011" which looks unimpressive elsewhere.
  - krschultz 16y ago
    Although they will have had the experience of being a manager (albeit for 1/4 of the time), and having been in both the manager and employee role during the same time period, they probably end up learning more about being a good manager than most people who have the title "Manager". With 4-5 people, I think it makes a lot of sense.
    - wanderful 16y ago
      How?
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    My company handles this by giving you whatever title you want. When I started, my boss sent me an email: "Give me your full name and title, as you want it to appear on your business cards."
calibraxis 16y ago
The article mentioned rotating managerial duties, and alternative methods of adding structure. Was your comment taking that into account?
- mhp 16y ago
  Rotating roles is great for a small company when the amount of managerial activity is very small. But creative work and manager work don't mix well. Being a manager requires responding to things that are happening at that moment (interruptive), which essentially destroys 'the zone' required for getting things done as a creative (developer, designer, etc). The other problem is that most people aren't cut out to be good managers, and learning to be a good manager is a skill - the more you practice the better you get. You start to see patterns and figure out how to deal with them. But rotating roles could help when you are first starting out to figure out who has the manager chops, and who sees it as a burden. Ideally the less time your company spends managing, the more time you can spend making cool stuff, so if the workload is small - go for it.
genbattle 16y ago
This is really true, and something we are experiencing now in the company I am working for. Traditionally we've been a company with ~12 employees, small project teams of 1-4 people. Now the company has expanded to over 40 employees over two offices, with team sizes becoming larger than 10 people. We have experienced the exact difficulties you have described, and have been slowly adjusting to create just enough structure to organize and motivate people. I would add that an additional area that becomes more important as a company grows is communication. Once the company gets past the size where the CEO/Director is getting around and talking with each employee on a weekly basis, and physical walls start to grow between teams, communication becomes much more difficult in both a vertical and horizontal sense (a side effect of added hierarchical structure i suppose?).

by mhp 16y ago

asolove 16y ago

+1 "managing isn't something everyone is good at." How many bad developers get moved to management to keep them from causing trouble, and then cause even more?

pavel_lishin 16y ago
Isn't that basically the Peter Principle?
- kenjackson 16y ago
  The Peter Principle is less cynical, but probably more realistic. It's that you get promoted for doing a good job, but eventually you get promoted into a job you're not good at -- at which point you stop being promoted and you stay in a role that you're not suited for. Note, there's nothing malicious that happens here. No one is trying to promote a bad developer. People are largely doing what they think makes sense -- promoting top performers.
  - jsdalton 16y ago
    The usual money quote for the Peter Principle is, "in a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence" -- but I like your summation so much better.
- gvb 16y ago
  It is the Dilbert Principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dilbert_principle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dilbert_principle "[C]ompanies tend to systematically promote their least-competent employees to management [...] in order to limit the amount of damage they are capable of doing."
  - pavel_lishin 16y ago
    Ah, whoops - that's the one, you're right.
- emp_ 16y ago
  I like to call it the Alicia Principle http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Speed-of-Code.aspx http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/The-Speed-of-Code.aspx

jasonfried 16y ago

"But what works there, or at FC, is not a one size fits all answer." Absolutely. I'm simply sharing our experiences with how we run things - that's what my Inc. articles are about. I wouldn't expect anyone else to do what we do because we do it. Find your own comfort zone. There are plenty of ways to do plenty of things.

marcomonteiro 16y ago
I for one appreciate the insight into how you run things. I especially liked the point you made about encouraging mastery (horizontal) instead of managerial (vertical) promotion. So, thank you for sharing.
ry0ohki 16y ago
I really like your approach, especially making everyone manager for a week. I think the only problem I see with it is that if people want to find another job, their 37signals title makes it seem that they essentially "went nowhere". So even if you are paying them a lot more then when they started and they are the best customer service person ever, their resume still says: "Jane Doe - Customer Service Rep 2005-2011" which looks unimpressive elsewhere.
- krschultz 16y ago
  Although they will have had the experience of being a manager (albeit for 1/4 of the time), and having been in both the manager and employee role during the same time period, they probably end up learning more about being a good manager than most people who have the title "Manager". With 4-5 people, I think it makes a lot of sense.
  - wanderful 16y ago
    How?
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  My company handles this by giving you whatever title you want. When I started, my boss sent me an email: "Give me your full name and title, as you want it to appear on your business cards."

calibraxis 16y ago

The article mentioned rotating managerial duties, and alternative methods of adding structure. Was your comment taking that into account?

mhp 16y ago
Rotating roles is great for a small company when the amount of managerial activity is very small. But creative work and manager work don't mix well. Being a manager requires responding to things that are happening at that moment (interruptive), which essentially destroys 'the zone' required for getting things done as a creative (developer, designer, etc). The other problem is that most people aren't cut out to be good managers, and learning to be a good manager is a skill - the more you practice the better you get. You start to see patterns and figure out how to deal with them. But rotating roles could help when you are first starting out to figure out who has the manager chops, and who sees it as a burden. Ideally the less time your company spends managing, the more time you can spend making cool stuff, so if the workload is small - go for it.

genbattle 16y ago

This is really true, and something we are experiencing now in the company I am working for. Traditionally we've been a company with ~12 employees, small project teams of 1-4 people. Now the company has expanded to over 40 employees over two offices, with team sizes becoming larger than 10 people. We have experienced the exact difficulties you have described, and have been slowly adjusting to create just enough structure to organize and motivate people. I would add that an additional area that becomes more important as a company grows is communication. Once the company gets past the size where the CEO/Director is getting around and talking with each employee on a weekly basis, and physical walls start to grow between teams, communication becomes much more difficult in both a vertical and horizontal sense (a side effect of added hierarchical structure i suppose?).